DOVER— Jo-Ann Gorman said there were no bad intentions behind the actions she took that resulted in her being ousted from her long-held position.

The former director of the Dover Food Pantry voted out of her position and banned from returning to a place she's volunteered for over 20 years, was doing what she thought was best for the food pantry and its patrons.

Following the death of Kenneth Kincaid, founder of the pantry, Gorman said the umbrella organization under which the pantry is run, Dover Cooperative Ministries, wanted to pool the funds donated to the pantry with the Soup Kitchen and the Dover Share fund, two organizations struggling with contributions. When they learned about the balance of roughly $60,000 the pantry had acquired, they stepped in to oversee things, though they had never previously done so, she said.

Gorman created a bank account with her own Social Security number in an effort she claimed was to shied the money specifically donated to the food pantry.

Darren Janakis, a volunteer at the pantry was as disturbed with Gorman about DCM's efforts to merge funds. He assisted in filing with the state for the pantry to become its own nonprofit entity.

In an email to Foster's Janakis explained in an effort to protect the donations given to the Dover Food Pantry for its sole use, we established a nonprofit corporation called Dover Food Pantry, Inc. and the donations were moved to a corporate checking account. A board of directors was established and they filed the proper filings to the city and attorneys general office. He said within two months of the allotted 27 months, they filed their own non profit 501(c)(3) with the Internal Revenue Service.

"All the steps we were doing was really to improve everything with the food pantry," He said in a phone interview on Friday.

However, despite attempts to meet with members of DCM to talk about their concerns and plans, Gorman and Janakis said they were deliberately stalled by the members and so they followed through with their efforts.

Both Gorman and Janakis said they saw an email in response to one Gorman had sent to a member of DCM, who forwarded it to other members, saying DCM should pretend they never got the email and just stall the process.

"I didn't know what to make of that," she said.

Shortly afterward, she received a registered letter from a lawyer DCM hired saying she had done wrong, they notified the chief of police and attorney general of her wrong doing, and she had to turn the money back over to them as soon as possible.

Reluctantly, the money was returned. Gorman and those who served on the board of directors for Dover Food Pantry Inc. were banned from coming back to the pantry at First Parish Church.

"It was a big 'to do' that probably could have been averted had they agreed to meet with us," Gorman said.

Attempts to reach Francis Whiting, treasurer for DCM, were unsuccessful as messages were unreturned.

Gorman, who said DCM did not care for 28 years what was done with the money, said she thought she was carrying out what Kincaid would have wanted her to do by shielding the money.

"I thought I was safeguarding that money for years to come—for the people that we serve which is what Ken had started way back 30 years ago," she said.

While each of the three organizations under DCM serve the public, part of the issue Gorman and Janakis said they have with this merge is donors who donate to the food pantry can't be sure that's where their money is going. They said it's become a moral issue for them.

"The only thing we feel bad about is the people who gave money to the food pantry their money isn't going to be going where they think it's going," Gorman said.

As far as she and Janakis know, Gorman has not yet been replaced by another coordinator and they are unsure who is running the pantry or how it is being run at this time.

"I think the community needs to know that this was an involuntary thing," Janakis said.

Both he and Gorman said they don't wish to initiate ill will with DCM, but they feel obligated to let people know what's going on.

"We were known as the Dover Food Pantry," Janakis said. "When people thought of 'food pantry' they thought of us."